The Year of Secret Assignments Screenplay
Abstract
This is the story of Lydia, Cassie, and Emily. This is their journey through grand theft auto, romance, vandalism, friendship, fire alarms, flirting, death, a court trial, false identities, and more. Written as a feature-length screenplay adaptation of Jaclyn Moriarty’s young adult novel The Year of Secret Assignments, this thesis explores the creative possibilities of turning an epistolary novel into a movie script. Ultimately, the process of turning the thoughts of fictional characters into actions that could be performed by actors was informative not just in the process of learning script-writing itself, but also in translating the story from the words of one writer to another, and from the format of one genre to another. The lessons learned through the planning and writing stages of this project are documented in the artist’s statement preceding the screenplay itself. Also included is the script’s synopsis, cast of characters list, and signed publisher- writer non-exploitation agreement.